Unfathomable Riches of Christ
Vern Peterman · Jan 7, 2018
Unfathomable Riches of Christ, No. 01
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926611597744

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Have any of you been through or known anyone who has experienced amnesia? Yeah, I don't remember. Yeah, it's this partial amnesia thing that's a little difficult, right? My dad, who this year, if the Lord allows, will be 92 in May, I remember at one point in time, he went through a stroke in which he had forgotten a great deal of history. And it wasn't full amnesia, I'd forgotten everything, but he had forgotten a number of details about things. And as he was recovering from the stroke, he would suddenly remember, you know, partial details, but it wouldn't necessarily be all integrated. So he would remember certain portions of a person's, you know, history, but not all of it. And he would he would go by a house and not realize whether that person died. You know, I mean, so there would be and then it would be a partial restoration of memories and he said during the course of that time it was a little hard to kind of stay oriented because he had lost track of certain details and then parts of it would come back but not the whole thing.

And so it was kind of an interesting experience and of course it's a fairly frequent thing they'll play out on TV shows and movies and things like that where someone will go through Amnesia and the discovery process, who is this person, that sort of thing. I've even seen some where they have fake amnesia. Somebody fakes it for the sake of some evil strategy. So, are Christians, as they become believers at first, are they born with amnesia?

Pardon? Yes? No? Okay, so let's think about that. Born spiritually with amnesia, it is not in fact that they forget what they once had, but in fact they don't know automatically what is true of them. And think about that with an infant. Does an infant know what is true of them? No, and so they're really spending quite a bit of time just trying to learn, who am I? Right? Who am I? And what's my identity? And so we have seen that, we watch an infant and we see them discovering, who are they? And what is their identity? As time goes on. Yeah. Isn't that called a blank slate? Pardon? That's called a blank slate. Blank slate, yeah. Essentially what happens is they have a blank slate in one sense and then are discovering it over the course of time. It's interesting.

Yeah, Clay? I think there's probably an awful lot of unlearning that has to take place too. Ah, yes. And so there's this unlearning process as well. Yeah, Tom? To make it a little more crystal clear, they're not swimming around in amniotic fluid anymore, they're out in a different environment. Yeah, it's real interesting to kind of discover what do they come out knowing or recognizing and what do they not. But there is a long learning process.

Who am I? And what's interesting is people are even continuing to ask that question on into decades, decades later. So when we come to this class here, the unfathomable riches of Christ, one of the things that we're doing is we're looking at the question for the Christian, who am I as a believer? What's my identity? And so we're discovering that. There are some things that are different, however. And that is, how do we discover who we are as believers? How do we discover that? Studying the Bible. Okay. Teachings. Okay, so from the Bible, people teaching about the Bible.

Alright, yeah, Stan? First you must have the desire, because there's a lot of people out there that don't care to. Okay? One is a desire, so that's a part of it. Another one, let's ask this question, do people in some cases not even understand that they have something to learn? Yeah. Let's put it this way. For most of Christendom, believers are not taught who they are as believers. For most of Christendom, that doesn't happen.

So it's rather amazing. Wow, this is astounding. It's revealed in Scripture. How much of it is gained by experience? Do you know by experience that you are in Christ? There may be some experience, but it's not abundantly clear, is it? So one thing, it has to be learned from scripture, either from reading scripture, hearing scripture, being taught what it is. And unlike the experience of an infant who goes about discovering who they are over the course of time, experience may not tell us much. in terms of our identity. So we have to learn from scripture. That's why there's the great value of this elective.

And I'm excited to be able to say the other two electives also will spend a significant amount of time talking about what does the Bible say about who you are. Now what happens if you don't know who you are? What's the sort of experience that you have? You don't know who you are. You'll be subject to your circumstances. Ah, you'll be subject to your circumstances. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? It can be a bad thing. It can be a bad thing. Alright. Alright. You have a piece. Pardon? I don't think you have a piece. Ah. You don't have a piece.

What's behind that? You're struggling to obey what you think the Bible tells you to do. Yes, and frankly, again, most of Christendom does not look at scripture correctly. And so they get, who are you, confused, and how do I live life, confused. So that's something we want to look at very clearly. And we want to understand very clearly because scripture in fact is clear. So looking at this, we're going to be spending some days over the next year looking at what does the Bible say about who you are. Because who you are, why does that matter? You know how to live, you know how to behave, you know what to do.

And how best to connect with the Lord. Have you ever had anybody walk into your house that just plain does not belong there? Some people have had that happen. Somebody walks in and just didn't even belong there. Who are you? What are you doing here? And in some cases there's ill intent, but in other cases people are just plain lost and have no idea what they're doing. Pardon?

Spacey. Spacey, yes. I read of one circumstance where a man was having an ill side effect from a sleeping pill that he had taken and he ended up driving around in his sleep and he ended up walking into the house and into the bedroom of his ex-wife and her husband.

Fortunately they recognized what was going on, so instead of killing the man, They recognized what was going on and got him back to where he belonged and that sort of thing, but what was the problem? He did not recognize who he was, he didn't recognize where he was, what he was doing, just no connection whatsoever. It is possible for a Christian to go about life that way. We don't know who we are, we don't know what we're doing, right?

So as we go through this, you have on your handout here, it's just two sides of one piece of paper and the second side, the bottom half, is lined. And so we've titled this series, The Unfathomable Riches of Christ. And so what's amazing, so here's the handouts. We have them here.

This week is on the left, and then the next week we move it over. You notice the last week is empty. That's because we didn't have a last week, right? So each week when you come in, you'll want to do that. Also, while this week we have just one sheet of paper, we will often have more than one, in which case you'll want to grab all of them that are part of the set and not just the top page.

So what we have here is Ephesians 3, 1-8. That's where we've taken the title here. So here is the Apostle Paul, Ephesians 3, 1-8. Of course, the Ephesians elective will be getting there somewhere in the middle of the year. But as we look at this, so when Paul wrote the book of Ephesians, where was he?

Pardon? Yeah, he was under house arrest. He was awaiting, and by the way, when Nero had the responsibility for reviewing his case, which probably was done along with a bunch of others, there's no particular deadline. So he's under undetermined length house arrest in Rome, and so he writes from that perspective. So he says, for this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles. So he's a prisoner under the Emperor, but is that what he considers it to be? No, he does not.

He says he's a prisoner of Jesus Christ for the sake of you Gentiles, if indeed you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace which is given to me for you, that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery As I wrote before in brief, and by the way, mystery. Let's talk about what that means.

The Bible uses the word mystery differently than we usually do. What's a mystery in Bible terms? Revealed truth. Right? So this is a truth not previously revealed, but now revealed. We oftentimes use the word mystery for something that remains mysterious. The Bible, in fact, from Old Testament on into the New, and particularly in the use of the Apostle Paul, but the Bible is consistent. The word mystery in the Bible is a truth not previously revealed, but now revealed and made clear and plain. So when he says mystery, my insight into the mystery of Christ, the mystery meaning something that was not revealed, but is now completely revealed, which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit.

So to whom was this mystery revealed, this truth not revealed before, who was it revealed? To the Apostles and Prophets. By the way, the Apostles and Prophets set of words is three times in Ephesians. So this is one of them. So this mystery has been revealed to the Apostles and Prophets, so is it mysterious to them?

No, it's not mysterious to them and it is their responsibility to make it so that it's not mysterious to us. To be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel, of which I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace which was given to me according to the working of His power. To me, the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ. What does unfathomable mean and why that term? Never ending.

Okay. How is the word used when they say, for example, let's ask what's a fathom? Six feet. All right. So it's a measure of distance, right? Underwater distance. Right. And so it's typically in those days used of distance underwater, right? And yeah, I remember the joke in engineering is that, you know, Murphy's Law for engineering units would be everything would be in the most inconvenient terms possible. And the speed of light in furlongs per fortnight, you know. So here's Fathoms, okay. Fathoms was a distance down underwater.

And so what they would do is they would have rope with knots. and the knots were tied at six foot intervals and so at the bottom of the rope was a rock. So they would have this rope with knots at every six foot length and they would drop the rock down and count the knots. So if I drop the line down and I count three knots down, so there's three times So that's 18 feet down and if I touch the bottom at that point, then I've got 18 foot depth of water. What if I go through the whole length of rope and I still don't reach the bottom?

It's unfathomable. Not to be found out, not to be sound out, it's way deeper than I have the ability to measure. That's what this word is talking about. And here's the Apostle Paul who had been on a ship quite a bit. He gives in 2 Corinthians the number of shipwrecks that he had been in, and that does not include the one that we have recorded in the book of Acts that we haven't gotten to yet. Here's a man who had been on a number of journeys by ship But he's using this word unfathomable.

It's beyond the ability to measure using the longest fathom measure that we have. So the riches that we have in Christ are skimpy, wimpy, short list, half of a page. The riches that we have in Christ are what? unfathomable, of great depth beyond measure, is another way to put it, is beyond measure. Unmeasurably rich. Yes? My translation says incalculable. Incalculable, unmeasurable, it is immense.

So one way as we look through it, when we say that we're going to be looking at the riches that we have in Christ, for the next year of Sundays, are we going to study it to its full extent? No. And so a part of what we have to realize at the outset is this is so huge that spending a year of Sundays looking at it for about an hour each time, we're not going to get there. that we're going to scratch the surface. We're going to scratch the surface. But that's okay. Yeah? Very good question. Okay.

He mentions in this passage, Apostles and Prophets, it is a set of words that is used three times in the book of Ephesians. And this is one of them. And so we think of it, who are the apostles? Who are the apostles? Twelve disciples plus Paul. Okay, we've got the twelve disciples plus Paul. So this is the eleven disciples plus we've got Matthias replacing Judas, right? And then we have Paul added to that, okay?

So the apostles and prophets. Now, you ask a very good question about who are the prophets at this point in time. We have Old Testament prophets. That is what is being referred to here. The Apostles and Prophets. It's actually different. It is the same word, essentially, both in the Greek and in the English. The same word, but it means something different.

Because remember, these truths were not revealed before to the Old Testament prophets, right? But are revealed now to these New Testament prophets who accompany the apostles. If we read through, we will run into this as we go through the Book of Acts, but for example, read through the New Testament, do we have books in the New Testament that are written by apostles? Can we name some of them?

Here's Peter, right? First and second Peter. We also have John. John wrote what books? First, second, and third John. And the book of Revelation and the Gospel of John. So five books by the Apostle John. How about the first book of the New Testament? Matthew, all right. Now we have Mark in there, and we're going to be looking more at Mark as we go through the book of Acts. Is Mark an apostle?

No. He is not. He is not. So why does he get to write a book? Because he did. Pardon? Because he did. He certainly did, yes. Wasn't he a disciple of Paul? Ah, so one of the things we see is that the authors of the books of the New Testament who are not apostles, they have sponsors who are apostles. And they act in the role of a prophet. Yes?

Was that the John Mark that left him? Yes, so what you have is John Mark, John also called Mark, as it says in the Book of Acts. We are, by the way, going to return to John Mark because his is a very, very important story. Here's a guy who flaked out on Paul and Barnabas. We're going to find out when we get into subsequent chapters in the Book of Acts, and pretty quick, we're going to find out that Paul and Barnabas have a sharp division between them over John Mark. Here's John Mark, the guy who flaked out on them. The guy, as far as we can tell, probably went home to Mama.

Barnabas takes him on and helps this guy grow up. And John Mark ends up being somebody that Barnabas has brought under wing, so to speak, that ends up being someone close to Peter. And so Mark ends up being Peter's ghost-written, if you will, not quite ghost, but ghost-written gospel. Peter is the apostolic sponsor of Mark, who writes then as a prophet. Spokesman for God.

And let's take Luke. Dr. Luke, as we've been studying the Gospel of Luke and into the Book of Acts, Dr. Luke wrote those two books. Between the two of them, you have about 28% of the New Testament. is not an apostle, and by the way, it does not appear that he's a Jew. And from every appearance, we'll find out in the next chapter, chapter 16, when Dr. Luke begins writing in the book of Acts using we and us, So he's included.

It appears that he had become a believer later under the ministry of the Apostle Paul, and he wrote the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts as sponsored by the Apostle Paul. And so he wrote as a prophet. As you go through the New Testament, you can see this pattern. There are books that are written by apostles, and then those who are written as sponsored by an apostle.

Yes? What exactly do you mean by a sponsor? I mean, today that would kind of indicate money. Yes, and so what you have is, whether money is involved, we really don't know. But when we say sponsored, it means under the guidance of, in communication with an apostle. So here's Dr. Luke when we find in Acts 16 to the end, he is much of that time with the apostle Paul. We find that Luke, Paul writes about him as a very faithful man all the way to the very end. to the end of his life. And so the sponsorship means that the Apostle knows of their writing, the Apostle approves of their writing, they write under the guidance of the Apostle and in conversation with them. Yeah? Could you say an understudy, maybe? Yes, an understudy is another good way to put it. As I've gone through Acts, and boy, I find it's not the first time going through Acts, but every time I go through New Testament book or Old Testament book, I learn more each time.

I'm finding, for example, what were some words that the Apostle Paul used uniquely? What were some words that Luke used uniquely or almost uniquely? So these are amazing things. There is a word, I'll tell you what it is, atenizo, so just a simple word, It is the word used for gazing intently. So here is Stephen gazing intently at the Lord Jesus Christ standing in heaven. So here he is gazing intently at the Lord Jesus Christ standing in heaven, and we find Dr. Luke using that word consistently, and the only other author who ever uses that word in the rest of the New Testament. is Paul, and he uses it twice in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, where he says, the people could not gaze intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face. And that one word.

So what you find is, here's these guys, Paul and Luke, and I find it again and again. that they use words together, and they describe things similarly, and these guys are in conversation with one another. They're guys who spent time together, and it's apparent as you study their writings. Yeah? Who taught James and Jude then? I know they were Jesus' brothers, aren't they?

Yeah, and matter of fact, we're going to be running into that here in Acts 15, James. So Jesus had brothers, we're going to be looking at that this next Sunday when James speaks up in Acts 15. So James is a half-brother, and he acted as, matter of fact, in the New Testament, we don't know for sure the name of any elder in the entire New Testament except for James, Jesus' half-brother. And what we find is, and we'll see it in Acts 15, the Apostles work right alongside the elders in Jerusalem, the elders of the founding church. So James and Jude could have gotten all their information from the apostles? Very likely. We know that they didn't become believers until after Christ was resurrected.

James and his brothers, even it's apparent from the Gospel of John, they wanted Jesus dead. Can you imagine, here's James who just hates Jesus' guts, and his brothers right along with him. I hate your guts. Even to the point, not just, I wish ill for you, I want you dead. Imagine Jesus appearing resurrected to James. What a shocking experience. Just mind-boggling. Yes. I hate him so much because as a brother he was perfect. You know, the Bible doesn't say why, but we can easily fill in the blanks there. Can you imagine? First of all, here's Joseph and Mary.

How do you raise the Messiah? How do you raise the Son of God? And by the way, can you blow it? Oh no, I messed up raising Jesus and now He's not going to... Imagine raising a son and you can't mess up. Wow. And then you've got several other sons and they're all messed up. Why aren't you like your brother? You know. Your brother wouldn't do that. Well, no he wouldn't. He's the son of God. Right? Imagine growing up with your older brother being the son of God. Wow. So yeah, it's a real stunning thought.

I don't imagine Jesus ever officially taught his brothers, but they were influenced by his lifestyle. And what's amazing is once they changed, you see a radical overnight change. These guys going from, I want this guy dead, to, oh yeah, he did die. As a matter of fact, discovering he died for me. So what a shocking reversal. We get the story of the Apostle Paul and his road to Damascus experience. But imagine Jesus' brothers. This is a shocking, shocking conversion. And we have explicitly in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 that Jesus appeared before James as half-brother.

Obviously, he knew that because he didn't give them the care for his mother. He knew that they would believe that later, but he didn't give them the care of his mother after he died. Yeah, so just for us to process that in such a huge reversal, massive reversal, and they all apparently went through it. We find in Acts chapter 1, Mary is listed for the last time by name as being among them gathered there, and Jesus' brothers.

So there's James, and Jude, and all of them. Yes? That's why Joseph in the Old Testament is considered a prototype of Christ, because he had the same Yeah, here are all these adverse circumstances that Joseph, the son of Jacob, went through. And so, yeah, it's looked at as picturing Christ in many ways. Let's take a look in the middle of page one here. We have various authors that sought to bring together these great truths. In this one example we have of Lewis Barry Schaeffer and his systematic theology has all these listings of the unfathomable riches of Christ.

Hampton Keithley III, by the way, I never met him. He died the year Nancy and I were born. I never met him. Hampton Keithley III, however, who by the way is somebody that both Mike and I have had communication with, but he's on the board now, he took Lewis Barry Schaefer's write-up and kind of condensed it. And then Nancy got permission from him to condense it even a little bit more and bring that down.

Bob Thieme is another one. He wrote Forty Things God Provides Every Believer in Salvation. Bob Thieme has spoken here in this room, I understand. He compiled that from Louis Ferry Shaffer's material and did some expansion on it. Arnold Fruchtenbaum. is one, he wrote 30 things, a study of positional truth, and so, 33 things rather, and so he's also put it together, and then George Zeller, talked to him on the phone just a few weeks ago, 215 things are true of me now that I am saved. Alright, so several people, a number of people have tried to pull this together, these things that are true of us. So how do we hope to do anything different? Here's one of the things we'll be looking at.

First, you look at the bullets towards about three-quarters of the way down the page, and some of the ways that people have titled this set of truths is, who you are in Christ, who you are in Christ. Secondly, the believer's spiritual position and possessions is another way that it's been stated. And thirdly, God's spiritual accomplishments regarding the believer. Now, which one of those three is true? All of them are different ways of expressing essentially the same thing, right? But we're going to be doing something a little differently than those, and we're going to be stringing them together and putting them together.

Let's look at the very bottom of the page, Romans 3.24, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. What does justified mean, aside from me giving a lot of excuses about why I did or didn't do something?

The short definition is declared righteous. It is, however, not a complete definition. Declared righteous. Now what does it mean declared righteous? Who declares who righteous? It's a legal term. So it is a legal term. It's where the judge says you're declared righteous, at least judicially, and so you are free from what you've been accused of. So this is a judge's term.

Does God just come up to us and say, well, you believe, and so you're declared righteous, and boom, and you're done? Is that the only thing that happens? And does it happen in isolation? No. And one of the things we look at, Romans 3.24, you don't get declared righteous, justified, unless you've been what? Redeemed. Through the redemption. So the redemption The redemption is necessary for you to be declared righteous. Let's turn the page over.

Here's Ephesians 1.7. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.

And Colossians 1.14, in whom, who's whom? In Christ we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. So let's take a look at this. We have a sin problem. We human beings have a sin problem. Why do we have a sin problem? It starts back with Adam and Eve.

Can we blame it all on him? Adam, you know? Is that the way it works? It's all his fault. No. Unfortunately, he is our representative, our federal head. We were there. He's the best of the best, actually. Yeah, yeah. This guy is completely innocent. He started off with a good start. He was our best chance.

So we have this sin problem. Why do we have a sin problem? Because we have a sin nature. Ah, we have a sin nature. It produces sins. It continues to produce sins. We were born with this sin nature. And so it generated all these sins. Is there anybody who has been born on the planet who has not generated a big list of sins?

Christ, that's it. So then, what I said earlier about a blank slate, that's not true? Well, think about it. In other words, we have a blank slate in some respects, but we start off with a nature that's not blank. The nature is not simply, you know, gained from our upbringing. That nature at the outset is a nature that has a problem. Yes? It's like when you buy a Microsoft computer, it's pre-loaded with all this hard stuff. All this stuff, yeah, and you haven't even, you're here just booting it up. It's got a bunch of stuff already on it. It has an operating system.

So the sin problem that we have comes from this operating system, if you will, that is defective, and who are the sins against? God. Ultimately, and this is what you will see in the Bible from the Old Testament into the New, that certainly people sin against one another. But it is the sin against God that is the ultimate issue. Sin against God that is the ultimate issue. And so what happens, we've got this long list of sins. Those sins draw what kind of a penalty?

Death. Death, right? And so is there any hope for this? There is only hope in Christ. Christ paid for all the sins of the whole world. People hear, behold the Lamb of God He takes away the sins of the world. He doesn't make the sins go away. That word means He lifts them up off of us to bear them, that's the other half of it, upon Himself. But that payment, which is complete and total and absolute, is only effective for who? For those who believe.

It is believing, then, that I am forgiven of those sins, right? The forgiveness of sins is possible, and then I am redeemed, I am bought out, then, of the slave market. And then God says, ah, you're out of the slave market, you've been forgiven of all sins, you are therefore able to be declared righteous. So, being declared righteous, being justified is not something that happens in a vacuum, but it happens because we've been forgiven and because we've been redeemed.

Now, as you look at Romans 3.24, as you look at Ephesians 1.7, as you look at Colossians 1.14, How does that forgiveness and redemption and justification come about?

Certainly by the Lamb of God, but what do you see? There is an in-word. In what? In who? In Christ, in all three of those passages. And so, in Christ we are forgiven. In Christ we are redeemed. In Christ we are justified. And how did we get there? Did I work really hard to get in Christ? Am I 90% of the way there and I just have a little bit more work to do to get all the way? Yeah?

A gift is present. It's not for you until you take it. It is completely as a gift. There is no earning it. I either have the gift that I've received by faith, or I do not. So this is where we talk about, you know, do people understand who they are? A great many people in Christendom think that I've somehow got to keep working in order to really get this in Christ thing down. That I've got something to do to make it better, make it fully my own. And you've got this to-do list, and boy, if you fall short, oh man!

What I did, what I didn't do. By the way, what people get wrapped around the axle about is what was done to them, what wasn't done to them. What they did, and what they didn't do. Those are the four things that people get all wrapped around the axle about. Notice that? That's because they're on the self-improvement plan. Yeah, and guess what? All four of those things get covered here. In Him. Yes.

And as I said, the big word here, two words here, are God and Christ too. Lots of people acknowledge that there is a God, but they don't understand what Christ means in the whole process. They don't understand what Christ means in the whole process. Most of Christendom, and a great many Christians, not having this clear.

People are beating themselves up, they're trying harder, they're giving it the old college try, they're going to try, try again. They feel condemned. Have you ever been there? They feel condemned. They give up. I mean, all sorts of things happen because this has not been made clear.

My sins were so bad, Christ had to die on the cross. And God said for us in the church, the body of Christ, He says, I make that effective for you by putting you in Christ. And you are therefore forgiven, you're therefore redeemed, you're therefore declared righteous. And that's just the beginning. So one of the things we'll be talking about, and it'll probably be a couple of weeks out before we start into it in detail, is simply what does it mean to be in Christ? What is my new history? That's why I ask the question somewhat with a wink. Are we born spiritually with amnesia? And it's not true in the sense that we've forgotten something, but that we need to learn it from scripture.

And if we don't understand it, what's going to happen is those four things that get us all wrapped up are going to keep us horribly wrapped up. until we understand this very clearly. It's the things that were done to me, the things that were not done to me. It's the things I did and the things I didn't do. Those will get us all wrapped around the axle for the rest of our days until we get this understood clearly.

I'm in Christ and all those things have been forgiven. I'd shared, you know, previously that I, at one point in time, you know, mid to late teens, had a horrible problem with rage. Because I saw injustices and, boy, I wanted to fix it now. And I had to come to a realization that everything, every single injustice, and boy, the world is full of them. And I'd been a part of them. either on the receiving end or in carrying it out.

The world is full of it, but God has dealt with every single one of those things on the cross, sometimes in this life, and this is what irks us. Justice doesn't always happen here in this life, and many times does not. But in eternity, everything will be dealt with. Everything. God, all the little stuff that only you know about, the stuff that only you and one other person knows about, but they won't admit. I mean, all those horrible things, all the horrific injustices, it will all be settled. And in God's mind, since He's not stuck in time like we are, it's already done.

And I need to settle with that. So anyway, we have a tremendous thing to continue to go through. We'll be looking at more aspects before we start digging into the details. More aspects of these unfathomable riches that we have in Christ. It's not just taking care of all the negative stuff, but it's also these immense blessings that we have. And so we'll be taking a look at that. So anyway, there's much more to cover. Thoughts? Questions? I'd say fantastic. Alright, let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for these just unfathomable riches indeed that we have in you. We thank you for the things you revealed here. You want for us to know them and to understand them. and to believe them, and also to live in them, and learn things in our past, things that are going on now, things that have yet to take place. All those things, you've dealt with them, and we want to learn them. And they are all centered and focused upon you. And with that, we just give you thanks in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.